Everything But What I Want to Know

I was out this evening and it wasn't until I got home that I learned Ophelia Ford's Senate vote tomorrow has been blocked by a Federal judge.

But every story I've seen so far -- state and local papers, television news -- has omitted the most important part of the story: On what grounds was Ford's request for an injunction filed, and on what grounds was it granted? Why is a Federal judge intervening in a State matter?

Did everyone just miss that part somehow? How about, you know, reporting the news? Jeez but y'all newspeople are just getting worse and worse.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Ah, the Tennessean reports:

Ford's court complaint says the Senate discriminated against her and other black voters in her district because of their race and denied them the right to vote. The Senate took an initial vote Tuesday to unseat her....

In her complaint to the court, Ford says Roland does not prove the questionable votes are illegal and that the Senate vote hinged on "unproven residency and mistakes caused by election officials." ...

The complaint lists Ford and three other District 29 residents, including two who are black, as plaintiffs.

All 33 senators, along with Roland, are listed as defendants, but Ford does not bring allegations against the 14 who voted against the ouster.

The complaint says that the Senate's actions "unfairly discriminate against Sen. Ford, the African-American plaintiffs, on the count of their race" and that the vote "denies the right of individuals such as (the) Plaintiffs to be eligible to vote and have their vote counted."

Finally, the complaint says the 17 senators who did vote to unseat her "would deny the right to vote on account of race or color."

Of course, race is justification enough for the Feds, and an easy accusation for the Fords to sling.

Gotta wonder how Harold the Younger is feeling about his auntie stirring up the race pot with the very voters he needs to get seeing past race in order to vote for him. Heck, with him telling USA Today recently that he's "white" (and so Ophelia is "half-white" by that math) you're forced to wonder how they can even navigate this muddle.

Fords: Free entertainment for Tennessee.

THURSDAY UPDATE THE SECOND: As the comments on Bob Krumm's blog note, since when does the Federal judiciary have the power to tell a State legislature how to conduct its internal business? Can someone explain that one for me?

Adam Groves takes a stab it. More thoughts (and links) here.

Parting Thoughts

Parting Thoughts

1) Let's clear up this pretense that television news shows and local papers are some pure expression of the First Amendment. They are not. They are in the business of selling a commercial product -- namely their readership -- to businesses with another product to sell. The "news" (or in the case of the Commercial Appeal, "information you can use") is the hook to get eyeballs to their product; more eyeballs means higher ad rates. Getting certain groups of eyeballs, as determined by market research consultants, also means higher ad rates.

Protestations that the news is pre-eminent over the business side of things is a case of the tail thinking it wags the dog. How many newspapers and television stations hire consultants to juice up their presentation to attract more eyeballs? How many bring in consultants who tell them how to pursue and uncover hard to report stories? Exactly.

News is a commercial enterprise. Learn that and you'll begin to better understand what you're watching and reading. They do not serve you, but the needs to make a profit and stay in business.

2) Just for fun, for the people in the local media who read this blog, I have a hypothetical: You learn that there is a terrorist cell in Memphis. They take you to their meeting place, where you see a few of them and hear them discuss not blowing up something, but setting up a network for later terrorists to come into, who will then begin bombings, etc.

Do you go to the police immediately? Do you call your News Director first? Do you do the story and never contact the police? If you just do the story, when the police and FBI later contact you, do you give them all the information they request? What would you do, and why?

3) Ophelia Ford will not lose her Senate seat. Get used to it. The Senate committee investigating this will send a strong -- though toothless -- rebuke to the Shelby County Election Commission. The Senate will place all responsibility there, as they certified the election and therefore Ophelia Ford. Anyone who thinks the Senate will refuse to seat Ford isn't looking at all the other senators who might one day face a similar challenge. You expect them to set a precedent for their own ouster?

4) I am now fully convinced that the Tennessee Republican Party doesn't want to run a successful candidate against Phil Bredesen for governor. We are seeing the same thing we've seen in the past two second-term gubernatorial elections in Tennessee. Both Ned McWhirter and Don Sundquist faced token (and that's being kind) opposition from the opposing parties in their re-elections.

Here we are in the middle of January of the election year, and no candidate! It's far too late to mount any kind of strong, effective, wide-based campaign by now. No one has come forward and no one seems too worried about it.

It's not what some Republicans are trying to claim -- that Bredesen is a formidable candidate. He's not. He squeaked by Hilleary and has come under all sorts of fire since. Bredesen is wide-open vulnerable on ethics, corruption and his handling of TennCare. He took state-shared revenues from Tennessee municipalities to balance his first budget. That move precipitated a lot of the budget crises we've seen across the State. The State has been running large surpluses ever since, but has never restarted revenue sharing.

The Assembly could, under strong Republican leadership, both restart revenues and cut the state sales tax by 1/2%, and still run surpluses! Yes, a half-percent cut is miniscule, but it's the symbolism of it, the statement of seriousness in really cutting taxes for Tennesseans, that is the gain. A gubernatorial candidate who aligns with Senate Majority Leader Ron Ramsey could start a powerful wedge to use against Jimmy Naifeh in the House. It's a winning platform, and a strong one, so it's no surprise no one in Nashville has advocated it.

I am certain that we are being set up, for the third time, for another run at the income tax. As others have noted, the Assembly seems to want to devolve some taxing authority down to the cities. Shelby County, at least, is interested in enacting a tax on business payrolls, which is not precisely an income tax but functions that way. Seeing how differently worded variations of the privilege tax go through the State courts will help to illuminate the path for writing a successful State income tax. I'm sure of it.

Look back to the various plans that were put forward when the income tax was last debated. There was only one common feature to every proposal -- eliminating the Hall tax on investment income. There a reason for that: the enormously wealthy who live off investment income want their tax burden relieved. Yes, all you hear about are the "grannies having the stocks taxed" but the real hits are to the ultra-wealthy. These are the folks who provide the real cash, and the real power, to the elites in the leadership of the Democrat and Republican parties in Tennessee. That's a big part of why the income tax keeps coming back.

The other is the more prosaic. An income tax is nearly invisible, especially as compared to the sales tax. How many times have you gone shopping for stuff, keeping a total in your head, only to be shocked by the final, after-tax, total? Now, how many of you can say how much you take home every week? But can you tell me how much is taken out in various taxes before that? Exactly. Most folks can't. Most folks think of "what they earn" as their take-home pay, not their actual pay. When an income tax increase comes along, it works out to a few dollars, or tens of dollars, per paycheck. Doesn't seem so bad, right? Not until you multiply that by every paycheck you got that year.

The Republican Party leadership this time is as bought and paid for as the Democratic Party leadership was in 1998. You will see the income tax revived in 2007. Mark my words.

=== === === === ===

And so, I take my leave. I'm out on walkabout. I'll check comments, once in a while, but basically (unless something is really worth it), I'm on hiatus for real.

Y'all take care.

Here's a Thought

Whenever property taxes in Shelby County come up, especially when the talk is about raising them yet again, the topic always comes to the problem of senior citizens on fixed incomes being stuck with increasing bills they find harder and harder to pay. Well here's a thought: Seniors should refuse to pay.

Let a group of retirees go to court and then to jail. See what happens next. (Of course, the County's not stupid. They'll use foreclosure, which is a long, boring process, rather than allow something dramatic like news footage of some granny being taken through 201.)

Still, I'd love to see a group of seniors play a bluff with the County on this.

The Great Gulf War

Glad to know I'm not the only one who sees parallels between Nazi Germany's rise in the 1930's and events in Iran today. No less a person than Niall Ferguson writes:

The optimists argued that the Cuban Missile Crisis would replay itself in the Middle East. Both sides would threaten war - and then both sides would blink. That was Secretary Rice's hope - indeed, her prayer - as she shuttled between the capitals. But it was not to be.

The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict....

Sharon's stroke happened at the worst possible moment, and Netanyahu may not pick up the slack in time. America is already making noises about leaving Iraq too soon. Our military is stretched hard at the moment. The American public is at the traditional point of losing interest, and being hustled along by Democrats and their allies in the media.

Ahmadinejad is a Hitler analogue. Reprising Chamberlain's "peace in our time" overtures isn't the way to go. Pre-emptive action is, but can we follow through? I'm not sure.

And that worries me.

A Desire Named Streetcar

The Cato Institute has released a study on public transportation that should be read by Memphians who have already had the Madison Trolley inflicted on them, and have the Airport "light rail" system waiting in the wings.

Prior to 1964, when Congress began subsidizing transit, the industry was mostly private. Since then, the industry has been almost entirely taken over by state and local governments. Today more than three of every four dollars spent on transit come from taxpayers, not transit riders....

The nation's mass transit system is a classic example of how special interests prevail over the needs and interests of voters and taxpayers. Total inflation-adjusted subsidies to transit—buses and trains—have more than doubled since 1990, yet total ridership has increased by less than 10 percent. Train ridership has dropped dramatically while automobile use has skyrocketed.

I've only skimmed it, so I don't have much more to add yet.

Remember this: the Madison Trolley is presently being subsidised in large part by Federal dollars. Slightly more than a million dollars a year in Federal money will go away in a couple more years, to be picked up by the City of Memphis. Similar operating subsidies apply to the Airport line, and will go away over time, leaving Memphis to pay for something that few use.

There are only two reasons these rail / trolley things happened. First is an activist group determined to turn downtown Memphis into Manhattan on the Mississippi. The Belz / Turley group have massive investment both downtown and in the Mayor, and expect results. The Smart City crowd want to build an island of prosperity for themselves at the expense of the rest of Memphis. The trolley / rail thing is part of the illusion of progressive city planning.

Also, local builders and contractors want those millions of Federal dollars. It doesn't matter to them if the thing gets used or not, or how successful or remunerative it is. Their only concern is the building of it, which they profit from immensely. If the choice is between having millions of dollars flow into the community to build another white elephant or not, they choose to build.

It will mean traffic tie-ups for years, again. It will mean higher taxes for Memphis, to pick up the slack in coming years. It will mean higher bus fare and declining service from MATA. It will mean expensive maintenance, if that happens, or more likely it will mean slowly deteriorating rails and roads until the City Council is presented with an expensive crisis.

The City really wants the line to tie in Downtown, Overton Square and Cooper-Young, even if that means the imposition of rail lines, stops and wires in spaces that can't handle them. They will destroy OS and C-Y in order to make them prosperous feeders to Downtown. The smarter choice, along Lamar, will play havoc with already congested traffic and present more pedestrian dangers, but it's the "wrong" kind of neighborhood to regenerate, if you know what I mean. And I know you do, if you're a Memphian.

But hey, at least we'll be necklaced by this albatross and can claim our rightful place alongside other "world class cities" because of it. Somehow that's more important than civic and fiscal responsibility.

The Tent Grows a Bit Smaller

And so it ends for yet another Tennessee blogger. The other tentpole of the Tennessee blogosphere is calling it a day. Bill Hobbs, along with the also-deceased South Knox Bubba, were the twin tentpoles helping to hold the tent up. With both of them now gone, the blogosphere here in the Volunteer state finally shatters into a million constituent parts, most likely never to regain any organising principle of such force ever again.

I suppose it was inevitable, but it's still sad.

Proof of Alternate Dimensions

Senator Ted Kennedy seems an unlikely source of proof that alternate dimensions -- worlds very much like ours where events happened slightly differently, like the South winning the Civil War or someone else winning a presidential election -- exist. And yet, in a press roundtable this week, he did:

Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. "This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency," he said. "The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws." Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that "Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old."

Had this been Bush, it would be proof of his idiocy ala Reagan. But from Ted, well it's just proof that his brain is still sloshing around in booze.

I've Been Podcasted!

Jungle Kitty is a Star Trek fanfiction writer who used to be very active on the alt.startrek.creative newsgroup back when I was also active there. I stopped writing fanfic, though she did not. She's now teamed up with a friend (Lene Taylor) to do a podcast about their Number One Obsession: Captain James T. Kirk, and the actor who plays him, William Shatner. The podcast is called Look At His Butt!

I've been listening for a while now, not because I'm a Kirk fan -- I preferred writing TNG and Voyager stories -- but because they are so damn funny. I'm only mentioning it here because in the latest podcast they briefly talk about me and a story I did called Star Trek: Clambake! It comes up after the mid-show break, around the 26 minute mark. Go and download the podcast and give it a listen. (It takes about an hour at dialup speeds; much less for broadband.) They have the rare ability to make it seem like you're a part of their conversation, not that they're talking to you.

While you're at the Trekiverse archive reading Clambake!, go to the Search tool and enter my last name (Hollihan) to see more of the 3 dozen or so of my stories archived there. I'm really proud of them. I fell away from writing fanfic, which I regret, but during the decline I started to construct and write my own ST series, Star Trek: USS Goddard (or maybe Star Trek: Discovery Corps; I keep wavering) which I think had a lot of potential. I want to go back to it someday and take it up. (The website is incomplete and missing a lot of stuff, so don't sweat broken links or missing graphics.)

Anyway, yes you read right, I'm in a podcast called "Look At His Butt!" Laugh amongst yourselves. Thanks to the ladies at LAHB for the too-kind words.

The Iranian Problem

It's not making much news in America it seems, but Iran's coming acquisition of nuclear weapons is prompting some gloomy predictions of what comes next.

Part of the "no news" has been a recent trip by high level American administration officials to Turkey, widely assumed to be securing permissions for flyovers and staging if action in Iran becomes necessary. Until Sharon's stroke, it was assumed that Israel would be taking action against Iran as they did in the 80's against Iraq, with US blessing.

The article and discussion linked seem to think the appropriate model is Europe in 1918, but I think it's more like Germany in the mid-30's. Iran's leader is open, defiant and unapologetic in his desire to see Israel erased from the world and the Jews exterminated. The American media may demurely look away, hoping he's not really serious, but the evidence is that he is. We can nervously pretend he's not a wolf, but given a chance he, like Hitler, will go for our jugulars.

We in the West tend to forget that Iran is the modern day successor state to the ancient Persian civilisation, which has controlled most of the Middle East throughout history. I don't think Iran has territorial ambitions, but I do believe they have economic ones.

Read the discussion. It tends to the spectacular and apocalyptic, but there's a lot of meat to chew on. This year looks to be The Year of Tenterhooks.

Read This Essay

Yeah, I know, gone on walkabout, not back soon, blah, blah, blah. But I read this Mark Steyn essay and demand that you read it too. It talks about multiculturalism, demographics, liberal democracy, Islam, government largesse and the future. The outlook is very, very worrying.

He touches on topics and projections that I've sometimes talked about here. How American military might made the European social safety net possible, to everyone's detriment. The death of "Europe" within a century. The displacement of Western liberal democracy as the central guiding force of history. How demographics are driving that future more than academic theory.

The only thing missing in Steyn's essay is an examination of secularism vs religiousity. European, Anglosphere and Asian birthrates are plummeting in those nations most driven by secularism, where the influence of religion is waning or waned. Look to South America or Southeastern and Pacific Asia, where religion is still strong in daily life, and you see more marriage and larger families. They do not face the demographic doom we do.

In fact, America's birthrate is just above the replacement rate only because of our laissez fair immigration policy. Look at population growth solely by Americans and you see that we, too, are below the replacement rate. It's only the massive influx of Hispanics, and secondarily the high birthrate of African-American women, that kept us above that line. Factor that out, and we're in Europe's boat as well.

It's a stunningly powerful essay. Read it and think on it.

Nap Time

I'm going back on hiatus again. Don't know how long.

I'm just not following the news any more. I haven't picked up a paper in at least a month; haven't been to their website but maybe a handful of times in the same period. Not watching television news, except sporadically. (And I'm still not watching WMC/5 at all. They still have that abominable hypocrite Susan Adler Thorpe as a commentator.)

I make the regular blog reading rounds, but a lot of the "second tier" stuff I used to keep up with has fallen away. Lots going on, I'm sure, but so what?

I'm just not informed, nor do I particularly feel the need to be. The world goes on just fine no matter what I think or say. The political leadership are secure in their positions; the voting populace appears to be just fine with 'em. It's all cozy and financially rewarding. The road to hell is well paved and we're riding in a cushy vehicle with wraparound seating, a CD/DVD player, cruise control and noise-cancelling technology.

I've tried to at least keep a hand in, but the quality and type of posts over the past month or two have obviously been crap. Traffic has drooped by half.

Depression, burnout, lassitude, laziness, apathy, hopelessness, seasonal affective disorder. Call it that and more. It's hard to care.

So I'm off to bank the fires and hope for rekindling. It'll probably happen; don't fear. I'm just not sure when. I wouldn't check by here too often, as I plan to walk away for awhile.

Take care and I'll see ya when I return.

Impeach Bush Now!

That's what Bob Krumm is saying:

It’s like cussing. Several years ago I went to Kuwait for four months to live in the desert surrounded only by other cavalrymen. Like everyone else there, my language was atrocious at the end of the tour. Whether used as adjective, exclamation, or punctuation, the F-word made its way into my every sentence. I was trapped in my own feedback loop of swearing. However, it didn’t take me long after my return to remember that civilized people don’t talk that way.

What those within the Impeach Bush-crowd don’t understand is that, similarly, civilized people don’t use the I-word all the time.

Oh, but they’ll learn. When they push the issue in Congress, and it comes to the floor of the House for a vote, boy, will they learn.

Just like when Representative John Murtha stepped forward to declare: "Withdraw immediately." (He only later, under the heat of scrutiny, changed it to "Move away, real soon, carefully.") and the Dems leapt all over it, only to scamper away when the declaration was put to a vote on the floor of the House. (Twice!)

Democrats are "stuck on stupid." Republicans should take advantage of that. Play their bluff again. Put a motion on the floor and watch them scamper away again. Let America see that they aren't serious, just partisan. Again.

It shut up the "Withdraw now!" clamor, and it will shut down the impeachment talk.

Go for it!

Quote for the Day

That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed.

H.P. Lovecraft in From Beyond

Back Into Battle

[I posted this to BoardGameGeek earlier and decided to crosspost it here.]

Back in my high school and college days, I used to play some D&D games and a few Avalon Hill hex-and-counter wargames. I fell out of that crowd, and haven't played in twenty years.

At the start of 2005, though, my friend Mark was looking for a regular opponent for the table-top miniatures game Epic: Armageddon so he introduced me and bought me a starter pack. I've really taken to the game -- I went from total unfamiliarity with the Warhammer 40K universe to regularly beating Mark in one year -- and it has sparked a regeneration of interest in gaming in general.

First, I tracked down an old AH favorite game, Afrika Korps, on eBay and bought it, though I haven't played it yet. Then I found the Memphis gaming group this month and got together with some of them. We only had time for Ra, but I found myself really enjoying the game and the people. I'll be going back when I can.

I've also restarted playing chess, to sharpen my analytical skills. So far I'm only playing a computer program until I can get decent again.

Today, Mark and I... well, we went directly into the deep end of the pool. He found a copy of Flat Top, an old favorite of his, another AH hex-and-counter game about WWII naval battles in the South Pacific. He'd already made a copy of the rule book for me to study, so we just dived in. We began with a scenario (remember that), a shorter, simplified, "game within a game," called "East Solomons."

Set up alone took nearly two hours, though some of that time did include tracking down loose chits. Running through the rules, making sure everything was correctly ready, and fixing my plane errors took another hour. (When the rules called for "34" planes, I took thirty-four chits, not thirty-four points worth. Oops!)

We managed to make it through the game from 1AM until 11AM in about 6 hours. Ten turns of a 66 turn scenario. We made a lot of mistakes, and unevenly applied the rules we remembered to apply when we remembered; we also inadvertantly or not left out a lot of rules and procedures, but we did it!

Yeah, we bit off a lot to chew but we definitely had fun, in that "my brain hurts" kind of way that wargamers experience until one day the game just clicks and play suddenly becomes transparent. Or as transparent as a chart, counter and "formation box" heavy wargame like Flat Top can become.

First lesson? Start small. This game may have been the wrong place to start, but Mark's an old Navy man so he "gets" the theme and we both like wargames. We were smart to begin with a scenario and not the whole enchilada here. Even so, we joked about why admirals need staffs.

Second lesson? We need more tables! It takes three: one for the game boards; one each for our "formation box" charts and all the other charts and rules we need. Both our apartments are small and cramped, and mine has a friendly, inquisitive cat, so we might need to find some public space that will let us take it over for a day. (Hah! Maybe we just need to clean up the clutter in our apartments.) Any ideas?

Lastly, I had forgotten how absorbing hex-and-counter wargaming can be. I've already had that sensation of utterly losing myself in play with Epic and I like it. This one will take some work to master, but wandering around the Pacific, looking for carriers, watching for his aircraft, was a lot of fun.

Now I need to take that Afrika Korps box down and get all the pieces ready. Maybe we can try that one as a joint-unstiffener before we wade back into Flat Top again.

Yeah, my brain hurts right now, but I'm a happy guy. I was pretty dumb to not be gaming all these years.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Mark has posted his thoughts on the grueling endurance test that was Flat Top.

And Now The Truth Begins to Emerge

I hate publishing a whole article, rather than excerpting it here and linking there but I think this one is short and sweet:

U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

And there you go. Now we begin to understand what was happening and why.

I'm still waiting to learn how many Executive Orders the President signed bypassing FISA courts, and how many innocent, non-terrorist related people were infringed.

Joke of the Day

In heaven, the policemen are British, the chefs are French, the lovers are Italian, the engineers are German, and everything is run by the Swiss.

In hell, the policemen are German, the chefs are British, the lovers are Swiss, the engineers are French, and everything is run by the Italians.

Update for Linkers

Just so you know, I switched off the hotlinks for the bloggers bash graphics. For all hotlinking actually. If you need the "New Memphis Mafia" button accessible for your site, just let me know and I'll hook you up.

They Support the Troops, Except When They Don't

It's a mantra from some on the Left: "We support the troops." Except, of course, when they don't:

Just as the seemingly intractable nature of the war has led to a growing recruitment crisis, so the United Services Organisation, which has been putting on shows for the troops since the second world war, is struggling to get celebrities to sign up for even a short tour of duty....

Newton said many celebrities have been wary of going because they think it might be seen that they are endorsing the war. "And I say it's not. I tell them these men and women are over there because our country sent them, and we have the absolute necessity to try to bring them as much happiness as we can."

Fear is also a factor. "They're scared," country singer Craig Morton, who is in Iraq on the USO's Hope and Freedom Tour 2005, told USA Today. "It's understandable. It's not a safe and fun place and a lot of people don't want to take the chance."

Say one thing, do another. For some, partisan politics trumps all.

You Had Your Fun, Now I Have Mine

I'll be away from the computer all day today, off slaying the Emperor's enemies in Epic. Normally the Battle Bunker is closed on Mondays but today is a special Monday -- the day after Christmas -- so they'll be open to serve your shopping and returning needs.

We usually play a game built around 2700 or 3K point army lists and had originally planned a "mega battle" of 6K points for today, which would take about 5 hours or so to finish. But other Epic players want to join us, so now we're likely looking at six players and maybe as many as 30,000 points total! It promises to be a long day....

But fun, in that brain-wracking way. I find that I like the strategic thinking of this game, the planning and execution, the sudden and sometimes terrible surprises of large-army combat. I've even taken chess back up, albeit with a freeware program on my computer, to sharpen my skills.

Because you never know when some general, having just lost his key man, will turn to scan the crowd, point a sharp finger my way and bark, "You! Lead my forces to victory!"

Later, y'all.

MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Whew! What a day. We got there about noon and started setting up just before one. We finished setup around 2:30. The first turn took three hours and we never even finished the second before one guy got dispirited, another fell asleep, and another had to leave. Man, oh man.

We had three armies to a side; two sides. Each side was 18,000 points. The whole battle was 36,000 points! Unbelievable. I think it's the largest game we may see for quite a while. Eldar, Space Marines and Orks (that's us) vs. Eldar, Space Marines and Imperial Guard. The IG has lots of artillery that can reach across the field and pound us before we can even get moving. It was brutal at first. Mark was our overall general; Fuzzy and I his lieutenants. Two of the three guys we faced were long-time players of Epic and very good generals.

We elected to wait for them to move up, then start whacking away at them. That mostly worked.

It was a huge mess and lots of fun. My Space Marines anchored the center and did their job in holding it. I even lent support to Mark's Orks on our right flank. Fuzzy had the left flank and he was rolling it up by the end of turn one. In turn two, he broke a large section of our opponents' forces and was clearly going to control his side of the board. I was still securing the middle and Mark was slowly grinding away on the right, suffering a lot of frustration from his direct opponent. But he also broke a lot of the enemy's forces.

A slow, draggy, chaotic slugfest. It was enthralling!

TUESDAY UPDATE: Mark reports on his experience of the mega-battle.

Holiday Bonus Quote of the Day

From that endless spring of silly that is The Tick:

You're on a first name basis with lucidity, little friend. I have to call it "Mister Lucidity" and that's no good in a pinch.